Geographical review
2007 IN BRIEF
- The US delivered strong financial performance in 2007 despite a continually challenging market environment. Our brands demonstrated growth and outpaced our competition in nearly all market segments in which we compete.
- AstraZeneca maintained its market position as the second largest brand name pharmaceutical company in Canada.
- The rest of the world delivered a strong year, driven by Crestor, Symbicort, Seroquel and Arimidex and high growth in China, Brazil and Mexico.
- Strong brand performance in Europe continued to offset increasingly effective measures by national governments to contain drug expenditure.
- In Asia Pacific, our growth was the second highest among the top 10 pharmaceutical companies. In China we continue to rank as the number one multinational pharmaceutical company in the prescription market (HKAPI-Q3 YTD data) and in Australia we climbed to become the second-largest pharmaceutical company.
- In Japan, AstraZeneca was the second fastest-growing pharmaceutical company amongst the top 15 pharmaceutical companies. This was driven by Casodex, Losec, Arimidex, and strong full-scale launch of Crestor.
- Sales in the Latin America region increased by 23%, driven by Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Central America and the Caribbean.
Statements of competitive position, growth rates and sales
As in the rest of this Annual Report and Form 20-F Information, except as otherwise stated, market information in this Geographic Review regarding the position of our business or products relative to its or their competition is based upon published statistical sales data for the 12 months ended 30 September 2007 obtained from IMS Health, a leading supplier of statistical data to the pharmaceutical industry. For the US, dispensed new or total prescription data are taken from the IMS Health National Prescription Audit for the 12 months ended 31 December 2007. Except as otherwise stated, these market share and industry data from IMS Health have been derived by comparing our sales revenue to competitors’ and total market sales revenues for that period. Except as otherwise stated, growth rates and sales are given at constant exchange rates.
